Exodus, as the phone is called, is supposed to be the company’s second wind. HTC was founded in the late nineties as a laptop manufacturer, and was one of the first to produce touch-screen phones. However it was more or less pushed out of the market by the subsequent success of Google and Apple, and sold half of its workforce to the former in September 2017.

“New paradigm”

The Exodus was was released into the market in October. CEO Phil Chen said at the time that blockchain is a “new paradigm for smartphones”.

Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin, announced that he would be working as an adviser to the development team in July. Naturally, at the same time the company revealed that the phone would be supporting Litecoin.

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HTC’s main competitor in this race is Sirin, an Israeli firm which once signed Lionel Messi as a company spokesman and whose CEO is currently tied in a complicated court battle.

Brave is an open-source internet browser which automatically blocks adverts. It was created in May 2015 By Brendan Eich and Brian Bondy. Eich created JavaScript, one of the programming languages that underpins the internet, in 1995, and was also behind the creation of Mozilla Firefox.

Brave also has its own cryptocurrency – the BAT, of which the firm sold $35 million worth within 30 seconds in May 2017. BAT stands for ‘basic attention token’ and it is central to Brave’s business idea – selling advertising to customers who are willing to put up with it.

Who owns your attention? Who owns your web browsing experience? Who gets paid? If not you, then you’re “product”.